Tag: Via Francigena

Influencer

Isola di Farnese on la Via Francigena, October 2024

I don’t want to to sound out of touch,
but I really am exhausted by the word “influencer”

that word suggests trying to
have control over somebody else

and there is already
too much of that going
in the world already

I don’t like the term
“clout” either

that word is too fickle for me

whenever I desire power it feels like I’m trying to hold a melting ice cube in my hand

I don’t want to
sway anyone

I want to serve them

I don’t want to
blaze a path for you

~ I want to get lost with you ~

to crave authority
would require me
to surrender
my amateur status

and I quite love being
a newbie here with you here

I don’t want to guide you down
this River

I want to enjoy the ride with you
until we reach the great waterfall

don’t follow me
flow with me

and as we go

let’s not influence
each other to be like us

instead

let’s listen to
each other

until our ears become
shaped like our hearts

~ John Roedel from his upcoming poetry collection “wonderache” ~

Called the Facebook poet, John Roedel has developed a reputation for heartfelt writing, often posting photos of his rough drafts hand-scrawled on lined notebook pages. From his website: “Offering a sincere and very relatable look at his faith crisis, mental health, personal struggles, perception of our world, and even his fashion sense, John’s writing has been shared millions of times across social media and lauded by fans and readers worldwide.” 

There’s something touching about this poem for me because it illuminates a tender vulnerability within myself. The shift from having had a career with influence to when, after its abrupt end, I began in earnest to write. Engaging in this mostly solitary endeavour, my sense of community is fragile and self doubt can arise from “the sticky web of personal/with its hurt and its hauntings,” obscuring those occasions when I“become a pure vessel/for what wants to ascend from silence.” (John O’Donohue, “For the Artist at the Start of Day”).

To write as an act of service – not to sway, or blaze a path – is predicated on mutual reciprocity: releasing my poems into the world so that others may read them. Lately, I’ve been caught in the traditional-self publishing dilemma. After working this spring with my wise and thoughtful editor-essayist-poet Jenna Butler, my manuscript sits with three traditional presses whose protocols are precise on prior publications. Hence why I seldom post my own work here or on social media. Recently, I’ve initiated conversations with self-published writers, and with a press who assists, for a fee, writers to publish their own works.

I feel poised on the edge of a “great waterfall.” Vulnerable. Uncertain. But to imagine flowing with, and having my words be read, or heard by others, our eyes and ears becoming “shaped like our hearts,” brings me deep joy. Maybe the nudge to push me over.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

Clouds

enroute to Gambassi Terme
enroute to Acquapendente

CLOUDS
All afternoon, Sir,
your ambassadors have been turning
into lakes and rivers.
At first they were just clouds, like any other.
Then they broke open. This is, I suppose,
just one of the common miracles,
a transformation, not a vision,
not an answer, not a proof, but I put it
there, close against my heart, where the need is, and it serves

the purpose. I go on, soaked through, my hair
slicked back;
like corn, or wheat, shining and useful.

Mary Oliver, in Why I Wake Early, 2004

Oh, the clouds.

Walking most of the eighteen days in Italy on la Via Francigena – up and down Tuscan hills, across the wide expanses of freshly tilled farmland, in forests dappled with light or dark and sodden with rain – those heavenly ambassadors companioned us, occasionally letting loose their heavy load. A common miracle turned potentially disastrous, depending on the day, the colour of the weather alert (yellow, orange or red) and location in the country, or continent. (In Morocco last week, rain turned years’ dry lakes and rivers into muddy flows.) We were always safe, with our technical guides, Ambra and then Laura, always checking on their various weather and trail apps.

One day, I accepted the invitation to make the memories that come from braving the elements, and walked with three of my companions the distance to Bolsena- every step in the persistent rain and wind. Twenty-six kilometers from early morning to late afternoon through acres of dying sunflowers, village streets, forest paths, up into the medieval town and then down its treacherously steep and slippery cobblestone to the lakeside town’s more contemporary hotels. Clouds so thick the spectacular views obscured until the next day.

Soaked but warm. No waterproofing enough to withstand the deluge.
Shining and smiling. Proud of our accomplishment.
Memories made.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

memories made in medieval Bolsena, Italy (me in red)
photo credit: Laura Harris

Sleeping in the Forest

I thought the earth
remembered me, she
took me back so tenderly, arranging
her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds. I slept
as never before, a stone
on the riverbed, nothing
between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated
light as moths among the branches
of the perfect trees. All night
I heard the small kingdoms breathing
around me, the insects, and the birds
who do their work in the darkness. All night
I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling
with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.

– Mary Oliver –

This poem arrived shortly after I had posted Monday’s blog, Love Letters to Life. Its imagery brings to life what I could only hope to have conveyed. That by walking alone along the same river routes for weeks, I began to know and feel my relationship with earth, with life, and its relationship with me. That as I re-remembered this, so, too, was I being remembered, taken in, and held by earth.

A few minutes ago, I wished my friend “buona notte” as we concluded our monthly Zoom call. Held within our mutual love and respect for each other, our conversations always bring gifts – an insight, deeper clarity, more to ponder. Knowing that in a week’s time I’ll be in Italy, feeling its imminent “realness” and growing excitement and curiosity, with her invitation I was able to speak my intention for walking, alone-together with women, currently strangers, but soon to be walking mates.

May we feel remembered by the earth.
May we “sleep as never before,” rising each morning rested, refreshed, and ready for the day’s stage.
May our thoughts “float as light as moths among the branches of perfect trees,” and not weigh heavy as stones in our packs.
May we feel the presence, support, and joy of being with each other, inviting each other and ourselves into “something better.”

This will be my last Friday photo and poem feature until my return in mid-October. I expect to post “love letters” on Facebook if you’d like to follow along. Until then, much love and kindest regards, dear friends.


Our Joined Sorrows

Niagara’s old sycamores
sycamore bark

LANGUAGE OF LIGHT
Next to the garden beds I wait
while summer’s profusion wanes

the sycamores stand in unity rows
guarding a path for the recently dead

arboreal complexion of limbs and trunk
sentient camouflage in pale olive and tan

trees older than first-born stars
leaves shimmering in the language of light.

Diana Hayes, Language of Light, 2023

I’ve started my preparation for another autumn long walk in Italy. This time, a small women’s group walking a small portion of the ancient Via Francigena from San Miniato, Tuscany to Rome. No doubt obvious to you who follow me here and on social media, I am smitten with Italy, and am borrowing a page from a once friend who said there was something about returning repeatedly to the same place, to venture deeper in.

I feel good going into this summer’s training. Last year’s foot injury has healed. So, too, my heart – mostly – from Annie’s year-ago passing. Following the same program developed by my friend, I’m starting a month earlier and so feel an ease and confidence I didn’t last summer. Every other day, alternating with pickleball, and a rest day, my chiropractor approves.

Today it rained. I opted for a slow start hoping for the forecasted three-hour break in the showers. Eventually I decided to dress for the weather and set out with my new floral knee-length rain poncho. I “ruck,” meaning when I walk, I carry at least ten pounds of weight in my pack, use my poles and wear my hiking boots, and made of today an experiment in waterproofing and breathability. Better to test here than thousands of miles and another continent away.

Last year, my friend accompanied me on many walks. This year, plagued by her own chronic foot injury, I’ll be walking alone most days. And I’m quite OK with that, given my proven way, even in groups, of often walking solo, in silence, with my camera ever ready. And so it was, Tuesday and today (Thursday), I resumed my lapsed practice of listening to podcasts. Several On Being with Krista Tippett episodes, the last one featuring a conversation with poet, essayist, teacher, and community gardener Ross Gay on The Insistence of Joy. His closing words struck deep:

Is sorrow the true wild?
And if it is — and if we join them — your wild to mine —
what’s that?
For joining, too, is a kind of annihilation.
What if we joined our sorrows, I’m saying.
I’m saying: What if that is joy?

Step by step, mulling his concluding words, that powerful question, as light showers grew heavier, I switched over to another of my favourite podcasts, Ellipsis Thinking, created and hosted by my dear friend, Greg Dowler-Coltman. In this episode a conversation with Saltspring Island poet Diana Hayes, the author of today’s chosen poem. Greg had gifted me with Diana’s chapbook, Language of Light, an exquisite collection borne of her near inconsolable grief for her mother’s too-soon death from breast cancer, the same cancer she suffered at the same time. As I listened, struck again by Greg’s talent for deep listening and thoughtful questions emerging from his innate and kind curiosity, I felt a kindredness with Diana’s way of being in the world and as a poet.

Bittersweet is what comes to mind. Knowing oneself and another when we are vulnerable in disclosing and joining our sorrows. The poignant, piercing joy that can result when we do.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.